Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said that Western countries must form a united front against China to prevent it from “cleverly playing us off each other in an open market,” in an interview with Global television aired on Saturday. Trudeau then went on to claim that China has been able to use Western countries’ competitiveness against them. 
 
"We need to do a better job of working together and standing strong so China can't play the angles and divide us one against the other."
 
Trudeau said that competition began among "friends" because they are a group of "capitalist democratic states trying to do well", especially given the exceptional economic opportunity of the rise of China’s middle class.

Trudeau’s statements were made in light of tense relations between the two countries, as Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou Huawei’s chief financial officer while China detained two Canadians for three years on charges of espionage.

Canada had also joined other countries in their diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, despite China not having sent diplomatic invitations to the countries involved.

Anti-China strategic alliances

The North American PM's statement follows a frenzy of anti-China sentiment in the West, the most prominent of which was seen in the establishment of a tripartite alliance grouping the US, Australia, and the UK.

The AUKUS alliance was formed on September 15, as the three countries agreed that Australia would purchase nuclear-powered submarines from the US and receive the know-how from both the US and the UK on AI, cyber, and quantum technologies, in addition to underwater and long-range missile capabilities.

The alliance, however, involved Australia canceling a submarine deal it had concluded with France, a move that Paris dubbed a "stab in the back" and led to a severe diplomatic row between the Western countries.

It seems in this case, Western countries’ "competitiveness" backfired without China's involvement.